Today is April Fool’s Day, and being a born prankster I usually run something silly. I won’t be doing that this year, for two reasons:

1. No matter how ridiculous I made the article, it would be impossible to tell it from the rest of the news.

2. There are enough fools running the world twelve months of the year to bother fooling fools on just one day.

This is a hypothesis I should like now to support with the use of examples. First slide, please….

* Justice perverter and serial perjurer former MP Chris Huhne is in an open prison where the inmates have the choice of a gym, three tennis courts, and an ornamental garden. Huhne allegedly spent just 36 hours in a prison for ‘ordinary’ people.

* Under the proposed NHS ‘reforms’, 211 GP-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across England will replace primary care trusts – NHS management who had the final say on who gets what treatment, and by when. The CCGs are entirely primary care and referral-focused, but they will control £65bn of NHS funds in the fiscal year that starts today. This break’s the first rule of dealing with doctors: never give them anything to do beyond healing. Like people in show business, they become idiots when talking about, or doing, anything else. Also a majority of GPs are ‘very uncomfortable’ with being given the role as ration-masters. £65 bn, by the way, is a staggering 60% of the total NHS budget. As medication costs come in on top of CCG budgets at around £12bn, this means that every single hospital in the UK must share out just £34bn. Absolutely bonkers….but really designed to put hospitals de facto into isnolvency, and allow entry for the private sector.

* Thursday’s Soaraway Sun (don’t we all wish it would) had a YouGov poll with Labour opening up a ten-point lead over Camerlot. This is a lead gained by a Party led by a bloke who has failed spectacularly since being elected either to establish himself as standing for something – anything – or assuaging the grudge his brother still holds against him for winning. It is also a Party that has no clue what to do about the EU, and not much more about how to fix our debt and economy trap. The figures in full were Conservative 30%, Labour 40%, LibDems 12%, and UKip 13%. So now, having screwed up the 2010 election and been forced into a Coalition with Nick Clegg, David Cameron faces 2015 with the near-certain knowledge that he will need another Coalition with the Faragists to stay in power. Only Cameron can do this, because he depresses the figures other leaders cannot reach.

* In the US, Washington State may soon join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia as a state with legal gay marriage. Microsoft is headquartered in Washington State, and is enthusiastically backing the same-sex marriage Bill. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs, says the law is essential to the company’s competitive edge. He told CNBC, “As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits, and their families.” Listen, if business wants it, that’s good enough for me: I just feel sorry for Brad Smith, as there is no law in Washington giving equal rights to knobheads.

Today is Easter Monday. When you go onto Ask and type “What are we celebrating on Easter Monday?” the recommended answer is ‘Easter Monday is known as a ‘bank holiday’ and is recognised on the Monday following Easter Sunday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.’ Presumably, the religious reason wasn’t on the syllabus.

Super write up but would just like to point out that Easter even the name is in fact pagan in origin even down to the bunnies and eggs. Much of the symbolism used was a way to Christianise the pagans rather than truly Christ having actually died on the cross this time of year. Two pagan festival are celebrated during this period Eastre or Ostara then soon we have Beltaine. All about fertility of the land and rebirth. Hence the eggs and bunnies. Even the pastel colours are pagan colours.

The genius consultants in our NHS have painted themselves in a corner to be replaced by equivalents from Slovenia on 1/0 wages.Our NHS has a 12Billion pound drug budget which has exploded in recent years.In Blairs firs year,generic Digoxin 125mcg Tablets which were sold into pharmacies in bulk packets of 1000,were costing the NHS 7pence per month ,ie 28 tablets in a container.By the time pharmacies were forced to buy the same tablets in 28 tablet packs,the cost had risen to £1.28 per month.Since then,the active ingredient in most generics have dropped in price as they are made in China,whilst the fabricated tablet has exploded in price.This is a small example of the insanity of generic medicine cost in the NHS and little if any open competition which is fiercely suppressed by the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry.The GPs must expect an explosion in drug cost as the hospital cost will be pushed into the community and their budgets.

the same thing happened in dentistry in 2006. The overpromoted secretaries in the PCT’s were given budgets way beyond their pay grades. They dished out contracts to dentists based on targets. So now you will find in medicine the treatment will be based on tick boxes and what will benefit the contract holder ,not the patient. Anything outside the box ticking parameters you’ll pay privately,so you best have private health care.

Sometimes April Fool tricks come back to bite you ! When my kids were young, I told them that Spagetti grew on trees, (after the famous hoax), and to try to get them to eat a good mixed diet of Pasta, Fruit etc. A couple of years later, at a school parents evening, I was asked by my nine year old son’s English Teacher why he might have decided to write a very detailed and imaginative two page essay on the subject !

My favourite hoax was the Trident Submarine photographed at its new base of Henley on Thames….come to think of it…if the Scots kick them out of Faslane, that one might not seem so funny either in a couple of years time !

‘New Cyprus Business Model: 20% Fee To Move Millions Offshore’
‘At least three people have been stopped attempting to cross the border with more than EUR 200,000 in cash on their person – their money was confiscated.’

Following Maria’s point…. I’m convinced that one of the biggest problems is the privatisation of research. Since companies need to make profits, research is naturally going to be focused around treatments rather than cures – providing ongoing income rather than one time sales.

Any company that finds anything useful will protect the findings – meaning multiple companies duplicating the same research, with the results being owned and protected under patent and i.p. law.

If – in the same way that the state can take ownership of militarily useful inventions – it voided patents on drugs and moved them into the public domain, it could pay manufacturers to manufacture while nationalising the research by taking it back into the universities under public funding.

Sure, it’d be a nightmare to implement…. But take a look at the patent wars happening around mobile phones and you’ll see where this ends up going when left unchecked… With the opening up of genetics and I.p, I suspect that if something radical isn’t done, drugs manufacturers will end up ‘owning’ the diseases (through patenting of gene sequence) as well as the cures, and then we’ll see price rises and monopolies that put the current ones to shame.

Can you trust public opinion and as the public really changed in 2000+ years.

JESUS spent three years or so, ministering to people, healing their ailments and even feeding them [loaves & fish’s] He was greeted like a modern day hero on entering Jerusalem. Palm leaves were thrown down before him and how the people cheered.

Everything was just fine and dandy until he got up close to the establishment [religious leaders] politicians of their day. Then he got physical with the money-changers in the temple [banksters] who had a nice little deal going on with the religious leaders. Who no doubt made sure that they got their kick-backs.

What happened next? Even though the people loved him and cheered for him just a few days earlier. They stood by, whilst the system had their show trial. Then condemned him to death.

Even his faithful followers ran away and left him to his fate. The only people who stood by him was his Mother and Mary M.

Have things changed these past 2000+ years?
Have the public changed?
As the Political system changed?
Are we any different?

There’s more you could not make it up…
‘An unemployed Iraqi ‘benefit queen’ charged £4,000 a week to sublet a taxpayer funded £2million flat, it has been claimed’. What do the muppets at the Council do refuse any more housing of course not she is rehoused in another flat. Our elderly people who have paid their tax all their lives are having to sell their homes to go into care. In ‘care’ they get murdered by the NHS……COULD YOU MAKE IT UP. How much have they spent on Abu-Qatar when will this madness end.

“… led by a bloke who has failed spectacularly since being elected either to establish himself as standing for something – anything”
Except ‘Israel first’ like the other 3 – thats Cameroon Clegg and Farage – so safe ground there then.

In 16thC England a common All Fools Day gag was: ‘Your horse’s tail is on fire!’ Little did they know that, 500 years later, everybody’s arse would be smouldering; when it comes to the facts, and stupidities, of life, remarkably little has changed.

@iain – No not quite with the Goggles you can at least take them off and restore normality, but a frontal labotomy is non reversible so your only option from there would be to become a socialist and join the Labour party.

“….. David Cameron faces 2015 with the near-certain knowledge that he will need another Coalition with the Faragists to stay in power.”

Wildly optimistic there, John. Given the uncorrected electoral bias and UKIP’s inability to gain seats (which will continue until they specifically target some seats with decent candidates and lots of money) and assuming ‘events’ do not intervene, 2015 will either see another Labour government (God help us all) or a Lib-Lab coalition (God help us all again).

All that assumes econogedon has occurred before then and we are struggling under a State of Emergency or a Unity government slowly sliding into dictatorship.

After the mess the EU has just made in front of God and everyone it’s not hard to imagine Cameron being fairly easily re-elected. He wasn’t given much of a hand to play, but he’s played it rather well, if you ask me.

Don’t think so, Geo. Cameron has pi**ed off the dependent classes, the skilled classes the lower middle class, the True Blue class and his own credibility. If he is still leader at the next election I would expect him to be well and truly trounced.

Of course others than the “everyday fool” are :
– the foolish fool ,inept , silly , a clown of the mind
-the great fool ,wise beyond ordinary understanding, rare ,like Eistein , he wonders about the obvious , he stands in awe of the ordinary
-the holy fool ,he arises from spiritual subcultures and mystical religious traditions .Holy fools know a different reality than the rest of us and live according to it no matter the cost.They are divine madmen , Buddha ,Lao-tzu , Rumi ,Gandhi and Christ among them , all challengers of conventional truth , all masters .I know that today it may seem inappropriate to label these holy men “fools” but at their own time they were called that.And since is Easter lets skip the first four and go straight to Jesus.He saw through the veils of illusion to the unity of all existence . When he proclaimed he is the son of God , he was saying that we are all children of God , all emanating from the same divine source, our separate selves are just painful illusions .He became a hero among the poor because he ministered to them but respectable people saw he as scruffy wandering street person, identification with the poor almost inevitably forces a holy fool into the role of rebel, he shakes up the political and religious orders – state and church tend to scratch each other’s backs , when you challenge one you threaten the other – Not only was Jesus labeled a fool but sometimes he accepted the role and deliberately played the fool as part of his radical protest.He denounced the Jewish establishment for their corruption and collaboration with the Romans ,he chased the money changers out of the synagogue ,gave up his possessions and preached to the lowest classes.There is little doubt why the authorities called him mad and put him to death .

Probably by no mere coincidence the tale of Jesus comes gift-wrapped with the ominous message of his gruesome doing in.

By putting everywhere the graphic image of an apparently otherwise healthy and youthful man gruesomely butchered and tortured to death, and exposing people to this image from their earliest youth, you essentially completely terrorize them and authenticate totalitarian authority.

Discussing whatnot with a chap I once knew who has become quite an author, he steered me today from discussing Poe’s ‘Eureka!’ to his only full length novel “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantuckey” as to it prefiguring Melville and Jules Verne. Turns out Poe was caught up in the ‘Panic of 1837′ and really had no choice but to do as Harper’s & Co. suggested — write a full length book, preferably in two Volumes, as that was all that was selling as everything under the sun was collapsing including publishing.

Geo, you’re a little late for an April fool, they don’t count after midday, but, ‘After the mess the EU has just made in front of God and everyone it’s not hard to imagine Cameron being fairly easily re-elected. He wasn’t given much of a hand to play, but he’s played it rather well, if you ask me.’
is very funny.

If Microsoft thinks Gay Marriage is so important so that their company can “keep its edge,” then why not just recognize gay partners and leave the rest of society out of it. THAT would certainly make them look like they have an edge! “Hey, we recognize gay partners and no one else does!” But, no. They need to foist it on the world at large. Their claim that they need the STATE to recognize marriage so that they as a company can do so is utter nonsense.

I’m getting really tired of this very recent demand getting passed off as “a fight we’ve always been fighting,” and everyone jumping on the bandwagon to pretend, “Oh, yeah! I’ve ALWAYS been for gay marriage – for my ENTIRE LIFE it’s something I’ve believed in!”